Consider for a moment the possibility that everywhere you go, you aren’t. This is not something that you can really wrap your mind around, especially if it is your mind that is bending your reality. And yet it happens to millions of us each day. It can creep up on you, or can hit you like a piano falling in a Laurel and Hardy B&W. It is dementia.

Like everything that life throws at you, you learn to deal, to accommodate. It’s kind ‘a like being a craftsman and working your whole life with a toolbox of special tools that lets you do your work. One day, you pop the lid and there are tools missing. Before long the box becomes lighter and lighter every time you reach for something. So what do you do? Make new tools of course.

I am starting to take my one-man-show on the road. I have performed it twice now and it has been well received. Unless you know something about the backstory, you would never know I have a brand new set of tools.

The toughest thing about vascular dementia is the memory loss. I miss my memory, or at least I think I do. I missed performing more and am delighted that I have found new tools that allow me to continue to work. I now use an ear-prompt and a teleprompter to support my show and after a lot of work in my tiny studio I have a product that I am proud of.

I am specifically performing in residential senior facilities. The thrill of performing for a live audience is there again and it is the juice that makes my life worthwhile. The best part? As an actor, I never have to call for a “line” ever again.

Most importantly for me, if you have any notion of what existence is like in a senior living facility; they are places that need light and my job after 50 years of doing this, is to bring them a little.